2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize shortlists

Aravind Adiga, the Indian-born Australian author who won last year's Man Booker Prize, has scored a double shortlisting in the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

The regional shortlists were announced today, and in South East Asia and the Pacific Adiga is a finalist for the Best First Book Award for his Booker-winning novel, The White Tiger, and for the Best Book Award for his second work, a collection of short stories called Between the Assassinations, which was published in India last year.

Adiga was born in Madras in 1974 and now works in India but is an Australian citizen and went to James Ruse Agricultural High School in Sydney.

He is joined on the regional shortlist for the best book by an impressive line-up of Australian authors: Tim Winton for Breath, Helen Garner for The Spare Room, Joan London for The Good Parents and Christos Tsiolkas for The Slap. There is also a shortlisted New Zealander, Paula Morris for her short story collection Forbidden Cities.

Also on the best first book shortlist are Australia's much-feted Nam Le for The Boat and the less-known Ashley Sievwright for The Shallow End, Mo Zhi Hong for The Year Of The Shanghai Shark (New Zealand), Bridget Van der Zijpp for Misconduct (New Zealand) and Preeta Samarasan for Evening Is the Whole Day (Malaysia).

The regional winners will be announced on March 11 and will go on to compete with winners from other Commonwealth regions, where shortlisted writers include Salman Rushdie, David Lodge, Philip Hensher and Chris Cleave. The overall winners will be named on May 16.

Australia's Federal Minister for the Arts, Peter Garrett, confirmed yesterday that the Government would continue its support for writers with the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards for fiction and nonfiction. Given for the first time last year, they are the richest awards for Australian literature. Entries close on March 20.